Same option, different price
Seven exchanges, live in your browser. Options compared by their implied volatility and futures by their premium a year, so every exchange’s contracts compare.
What this is
Options, compared in volatility
Each exchange prices its options from its own forward price, in the coin or in dollars, so the same strike costs a different amount on each. The site compares implied volatility instead: the price with those taken out, live from every exchange, straight across.
Futures with a date
A dated future trades above or below its exchange’s index until it settles on it at expiry. The table writes that gap as a premium a year, so a future a week out and one a year out compare, each exchange’s against the others’.
Every strike, at the best price
On each coin’s page, the chain sets every exchange’s bid and ask side by side, strike by strike, and marks the best of them all: the highest bid and the lowest ask, and where one exchange’s bid is above another’s ask.
How to read the table
Volatility, not dollars
At the money: the strike nearest the forward price, where most of the trading is. Each exchange’s options there are written as implied volatility, which takes out its own forward and currency, so they compare straight across, from the lowest to the highest.
The futures’ premium
A dated future’s price over its own exchange’s index, as a rate a year, so expiries a week or a year apart compare: from the lowest exchange to the highest.
Where the positions are
Options open interest on every expiry, and under it each exchange’s share. Put/call: puts held for each call. Expiring: what settles at the coming monthly expiry.
Open the coin
A coin’s page adds every expiry’s futures and options, the chain with the best bid and ask of all the exchanges strike by strike, its volatility smile, and max pain.
Questions this table raises
Why compare implied volatility rather than prices?
An option’s price depends on the forward price its exchange works from, and on whether it’s quoted in the coin or in dollars, so the same strike can cost a different amount on each exchange without any of them being cheaper. Implied volatility is the price with those taken out: the same strike on the same expiry, compared straight across. On a coin’s page, the chain shows the prices too.
Which exchanges are compared, and why these?
Deribit by Coinbase, OKX and Bybit for options, and those three with Binance, Gate, Kraken and Coinbase for dated futures: every exchange on the site whose figures your browser can read. Binance’s and Gate’s options APIs don’t let another website read them, wherever you are, so their options aren’t here. Where an exchange turns away visitors from your country, the page says so.
When do the options expire, and how are they settled?
At 08:00 UTC on their expiry date, on every exchange here; Coinbase’s monthly futures stop trading at 4 pm in London on the last Friday of the month. Each settles in cash against its own index, paying out in the coin or in dollars.
What is max pain?
The price at which the options expiring on a date, on every exchange together, would be worth least to their holders at settlement. It’s worked out from open interest alone, and it says nothing about where the price will go.
What does a future’s premium tell me?
How far above its exchange’s index a dated future trades, as a rate a year. Above zero, the market pays up to hold the coin until the expiry; below zero, the future trades at a discount. A perpetual’s funding rate measures much the same thing, all the time rather than to a date.